“Briggs . . . Briggs . . . Key . . . Kean!” I bellowed, finally unhinging him from the aggressive trance he was under. It was as if he was in a brutal battle, killing his enemy before the fucker attempted to take him out. I knew war had scarred Kean Briggs, the inked stories buried just flesh deep attempting to cast out his demons told me everything . . . I just never saw how cruelly war had scarred his mind.
Key’s arm frozen in the air above his head. Blood saturated his once milk chocolate colored fist, his short black hair damp with sweat. When he looked at me I saw how toxic he was, his eyes were hollow and his expression filled with so much hate. It was as if he was someone I didn’t know. Someone who scared the living shit out of me. I lost my balance and stumbled as I attempted to stand up, instantly Briggs’ demeanor changed as if a switch clicked in his head and the man I knew finally showed up. He let go of Dax’s lifeless body.
“Rosie,” he breathed as he shuffled over to me.
“No, Key, Sybil . . . Sybil,” I huffed as I pointed to her motionless and sprawled across the bed.
I struggled to collect myself while Briggs rushed to her bedside. I watched as he dropped the side of his face against her lips, his large thick bloody fingers caught her wrist feeling for a pulse. His face melted into a fearless expression as urgency flooded his eyes.
“Call 911. Now!” he spat.
I froze.
His mouth crashed against her blue lips as he initiated CPR. Rhythmic breaths forced down Sybil’s throat, her lungs filling enough to make her chest expand before Briggs measured his large fist just between her breasts and began compressions in the attempt to jumpstart her heart. Sybil’s body still unresponsive except for the rebound of his patterned thrusts, I began to pray to the same god who never answered my prayers before.
“Please God, oh . . . please God, please God, please save Sybil. She’s the only person I have. She can’t die. Please don’t let her die!” I forced myself to stand, willed myself to be strong for my best friend. I stumbled and the moment swirled in my head, I pushed my hands up through my hair, holding it back off my face.
“Rose, 911!” Briggs demanded.
Clarity finally found its strong grip on me and I reached for my purse.
“Call from you’ landline.”
I snatched my home phone from the counter and dialed. One ring then they picked it up.
‘Dispatcher 233. 911 what’s your emergency?’
I took a deep breath and without any thought of who Sybil and I were or what we did to put food on the table words began to tumble from my mouth.
“My roommate, she’s been hurt,” I barked into the phone.
“All right, ma’am. Is she breathing?”
“I don’t know.” I pulled the phone from my ear. “Briggs, is she breathing?”
“No, tell them I’m doing CPR; have her pulse back to forty, but still unconscious and not breathing.” Briggs said in a stern, controlled voice.
“No, Briggs is doing CPR. She has a forty pulse. She’s unconscious, please just get someone here as fast as you can, please. Oh God Please.”
“An ambulance has been dispatched and is en route,” the 911 operator assured me.
“An ambulance is on the way,” I parroted.
“Rose, we’re going to need two transports,” Briggs said between breaths he forced down into Sybil’s lungs. His eyes darted to Dax, who was in an unconscious bloody heap.
“We need two ambulances.”
“Two?” the 911 operator questioned
“For the piece of shit who attacked her.”
“She was attacked?”
I didn’t hear her ask a question. My attention still on Sybil and Briggs.
“Rose, is that your name?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me, was your friend attacked?”
“Yeah, by a pimp named Dax; he beat her unconscious,” I answered. I didn’t care if he bled out and we had one less wannabe pimps in this world. But the rational part of me knew if Dax died, then Briggs would be fucked.
“Ma’am . . . ma’am . . . Rose, your roommate’s attacker is there?”
“Yes.”
“But he’s unconscious?”
“Yes. Yes, he is still here, my friend came in and knocked him the fuck out.”
“Okay, I’ve alerted the authorities and dispatched another ambulance.”
I heard the siren build from a faint whine to a loud ear-piercing holler. I could see the lights reflect in the old rippled glass of my window. They must have been parked in front of my building.
“Rose . . . downstairs . . . now!” Briggs demanded between giving Sybil mouth to mouth.
Within seconds two massive paramedics, dressed in dark-blue uniforms came through the open door. One of the medics was carrying a huge plastic tackle box. The other a clipboard and a big square canvas bag with the strap pulled across his chest. They saw Sybil and Dax and within seconds the one with the clipboard was on his two-way radio to the hospital. My conversation with the 911 operator became an afterthought as I watched one of the medics take over for Briggs.
Medical terms were spat as the urgency in their conversations flew from their mouths. I could tell they were words weighted with life and death consequences, I felt helpless in not knowing what any of it meant. I was so fucking scared as I watched them work on Sybil.
“Key,” I huffed under my breath, hoping it was just loud enough that he’d hear me. He looked over at me, his eyes unbearably tragic as he shook his head back and forth.
“No? . . . What? . . . No, what? . . . What Kean, what are you saying?” I shouted. My words scraped my lungs and every pain I had became a ghostly ache as I rushed toward Sybil. Briggs stopped me, held me back, his muscles were rock hard as he wrapped me in his arms.
“Sssshhhh, com’ on, Rosie; it doesn’t look good. Let them do wat tey need to do.”
My face buried in his chest, I screamed as loud as I could. I screamed for every time my mother hit me, screamed for the monster that took my innocence, I screamed because my parents didn’t believe me. I screamed for all the times I fucked someone for money. I screamed for the only person who cared about me. I screamed for my voiceless friend Sybil.
“Briggs? You Kean Briggs?” Someone’s voice interrupted my breakdown.
“Aye.”
“I’d like to ask you a couple of questions.”
“Rosie? Listen sweet’art, I need you to settle down,” he said as he pulled me away from his chest. I didn’t want to feel the air, I didn’t want to breathe. I just wanted to go numb.
“Rosie, you need to go wit’ Sybil. You understan’? Sybil needs you.” His voice was stern, thick with his accent and yet soft enough to keep me focused. His eyes narrowed, like he was telling me that I shouldn’t be here anymore tonight.
I pulled away in time to see them rolling Sybil out of our apartment on a gurney. I glanced over at another pair of paramedics working on Dax before nodding at Briggs. He grabbed my sweater off my bed, snatched my purse off the table and in a gentle sway he ushered me out of my apartment.
“Go be. I’ll lock up. Meet you in the hospital in a wee bit.”
In a fog, faded thoughts, clouded ideas, floating anywhere but where I was supposed to be, I heard the ambulance door shut behind me and one of the paramedics asking me what I knew about Sybil’s family, and next of kin. Something she hid since the day she came to live with me and sadly enough, in the two years we’d been roommates I didn’t know any more about her family then I did the day we moved in together. Well, except for the fact that she had an older sister.
THE HEART MONITOR clambered for a steady tempo echoing some form of life, while the oxygen that kept Sybil alive hissed a sickening rhythm that was scorched into my mind. Every once in a while the lilt of measuring her blood pressure broke the monotony.
Psssshhhh. Click. Psssshhhh. Click.
Beep . . . beep . . . beep . . . beep . . .
Grrrrrrrr . . . tick . . . tick . . . wh
oosh.
It was like a symphony of unbearable noise that wore raw against my mind like a bad song, until it tangled itself into my thoughts and became the only song I craved. Any deviation, pace change, or missed beat and my heart would fall into my stomach.
Motionless, Sybil lay there in a medically induced coma. The doctors told me that her brain had swelled and they had to keep her sedated to avoid brain damage. I asked the nurses a couple of times if they got a hold of her parents or her sister. They would just shake their heads and frown. I expected Sybil’s family to show up any minute and inevitably I would be asked to leave; but no one ever did and until it happened, I wasn’t going to leave her side.
The nurses explained the more I talked to her, held her hand, and spent time with her the better results they have with recovery. So, I sat next to her hospital bed and watched her life on pause . . . unable to press play, listen to her voice, see her smile or hear her laugh over stupid shit we saw.
“Sybil, it’s me, Rose. I’m right here, sweets. I’m not going anywhere.”
I looked at her expressionless face—no emotion, nothing. Her flesh marked with the pain and bruises of her lifestyle, I would be a fool if I didn’t realize that it could have easily been me in that bed, fighting for my life. Quite frankly, that scared the living hell out of me.
“They tell me the more I talk to you, the better chances you’ll sit up and argue with me.” I held her hand. Soft and warm enough, there was no tension, no response.
“Come on Sybil, you can’t leave me. You fight, you fucking fight to get better.”
Unable to answer me I hoped that Sybil could sense I was there, that someone was there who cared.
I leaned down next to her ear, tears dampening my cheeks, “Come on Sybil, we had a deal. You and me, we’re getting out together. Don’t leave me here alone. Just give me a squeeze with your hand.”
Nothing.
So help me God, tonight wasn’t going to be spent on the street, or in the back seats of filthy cars in darkened seedy alleys. It was going to be a solitary night praying for Sybil. I’d never claimed to be a religious person, praying never seemed to help me in my life. God never took the time to answer my prayers, but for Sybil, for her sake, maybe he’d see that I wasn’t the one playing the hand. Maybe as the holder of all cards in this game, he’d throw something down that would give her something to fight for. I wasn’t beyond hoping, praying that she’d come back to our apartment fully recovered. If God was willing . . . even better for Sybil.
Two nights. Three whole fucking days and two nights and not one of Sybil’s family members even cared enough to show up. It was building to a point where I knew I was gonna lose my shit on someone. I was exhausted, I hadn’t slept much, didn’t shower and I hadn’t left the hospital except to bail Briggs out of jail.
Trust me, I felt like a total piece of shit about Briggs. If I never called, he wouldn’t have come over and beat Dax within inches of his life. Briggs was charged with assault and spent the night in jail. His bail was set at five thousand dollars. Needless to say I got a cashier’s check. Briggs kept reassuring me that he would do it over and over again. He doesn’t blame me and was actually glad I called him and showed up when he did. Sure Key Briggs made his money off the violence of the streets, but he also had a heart and was more than happy to get at least one douche bag pimp off the streets for now.
Dax, the wannabe pimp was still in the hospital with a concussion, broken bones, and a ruptured spleen. He was under twenty-four-hour police watch. I was told the minute he woke up from surgery and was able to be moved he’d be held in jail without bail until his court date and charged with attempted murder.
There was no change in Sybil’s condition, I had told her so many stories, my voice was hoarse. Nurses hurried around, lights still shone bright and unnatural sounds still jumped and beeped her life’s story. I’d been sitting with her for too long as I waited for someone to come and claim her, be her next of kin and nobody ever showed. It was getting difficult, I needed to go back to the apartment and shower and maybe sleep in my own bed.
Depressing moments filled with different types of prayers in hopes that one of them would bypass the gatekeepers of God’s ears. All I asked for, all I wanted was the swelling in her brain to go down because we made a promise to one another.
I stood up to stretch and felt my phone vibrate in my pocket. Briggs had texted me, his texts were the only ones I was reading. He was the only one who knew what had happened to Sybil. Even all the texts I had received from Shane were left unread. There was no way to explain what had happened to my roommate. I couldn’t, so I didn’t. As bad as I wanted Shane to be here with me, Sybil needed me more right now.
Briggs was down in the parking lot waiting to take me to get something to eat. He had to steer clear of that piece of shit Dax, as part of his bail conditions. He couldn’t come within five hundred feet of him, and seeing Dax was still in the hospital that kept Key from seeing Sybil.
I guess Briggs knew I ached to have a conversation that wasn’t with nurses about Sybil and I knew I needed to stop the scenarios that kept playing over and over in my head. Besides, I just couldn’t eat hospital food again and spend another night in that fucking chair. I collected my sweater and decided to tell the nurse that I’m going to head home tonight and I’d be back first thing in the morning. I always talked myself into believing that guilt was a bullshit emotion, and yet, deciding to walk out of my best friend’s hospital room filled me with immense guilt.
I texted back that I was on my way before I pushed the door open. Life had seemed to be playing out just fine without Sybil in it. I blinked adjusting to the change, when I saw a nurse point me out to a tall thin woman dressed in a navy-blue pantsuit and a white frilly shirt. The woman had a look of horror on her face as she came at me in a quick stride that broke into a jog. One of Sybil’s ICU nurses followed behind her.
“You Rose? I’m Mandy’s sister,” the woman snapped at me.
“Mandy?” I questioned.
“Yes, my sister, Mandy Cooke!”
“I’m sorry I don’t know anyone by that name. You—”
“Sybil St. James, she was Mandy Cooke until she turned eighteen and legally changed her name,” she said in a bitchy tone.
Her face owned the same delicate features as Sybil but more refined, like she hadn’t lived the same hard life as her sister. With the exception of her wavy blond hair, she was almost a spitting image of her sister. Her hair, dirty enough to call it dark blond, she had it pulled back away from her face.
“Well, I’m Sybil’s sister, Martie,” the woman said hurriedly as she tapped the palm of her hand against her chest just above her cleavage. I was relieved that Sybil’s older sister was finally here. The weight of leaving her tonight lifted off my shoulders. Sybil wouldn’t be left alone.
“I’ve been in New York on business for the last month. I got here as soon as I heard. Sadly, I’ve been expecting this call for half of our lives.”
I could feel the spite in her words.
“Your sister is pretty bad off.” My voice was unintentionally louder than normal.
“Rose, my sister has been bad off her entire life,” Martie answered defensively.
“Well, what happened to her wasn’t her fault. We’ve all been dealt different cards in life.”
“Please, Rose, let’s just call a spade a spade with this entire situation; my sister has put herself in this position. The doctors and nurses haven’t painted a good picture about her recovery if she does at all, so before I go in and see her, I need to know what she owes you?”
“What?” I spat in disbelief of the words spewing from this woman’s lips.
“When she crashed my party several weeks ago, dressed like—” she stopped, sized me up before she continued, “Well, anyway, she mentioned that she lives with you and that you have helped her. I need to know how much it will take to make this go away?” she said as she swirled her hands toward me.
&
nbsp; “Your sister is in there fighting for her life and all you’re worried about is money? What the fuck’s wrong with you?” I roared, letting every last drop of breath flow from my lungs.
“Oh, come on, it’s all about the next fix, the next high with your types.”
“What do you mean your types?” I snapped. I was tired, done, and ready to unload on this poor excuse of a sister.
“I knew it was a matter of time before she’d end up in the hospital again overdosing or beaten and raped because of the life she’s chosen.”
“You have no idea what that girl’s been through. Do you hear me?” I pushed my face up into hers; standing nose to nose I was ready to throw this bitch down.
“Ladies, this is a hospital, please keep your voices down.” The nurse pushed between us and pulled me back from Martie.
“Sybil is a drug addict and a whore and she’ll say anything to get her next fix. So don’t stand in front of me and tell me just because you split rent for a room and sell your body in the bowels of San Francisco with my sister for a couple of years, you know her better than me.”
I took a deep breath, ready to blast her for being such a heartless bitch when her body language changed and she looked past me like I had no place in the world.
“Shane,” she cried as she looked over my shoulder.
I turned around and saw him standing behind me. The look on his face was stamped with every filthy word she said.
“Shane, oh, babe I am so glad you are here,” Martie whimpered as she fell into his arms.
“Rose, what are you doing here?” he asked.
“Shane? You know her?” Martie demanded as she pulled away from him, her eyes darted between us. Bewildered, his hazel eyes locked on me, and he ignored her question.
“Shane!” Martie spat, an annoyed expression swept across her face.
It was at that point the flood of humiliation drowned me. My heart was viciously plucked from my chest and torn into jagged pieces completely lost to the painful moments I wish I never felt. My breath robbed by betrayal. There was no mistake; he was involved with her.
Broken Girl Page 13